Saturday, November 26, 2016

Business as Usual

There’s a flat little box I keep on my office desk at
work. It sits innocuously at an angle in
the corner, minding its own business. If
you look more closely you will notice that it has a lid, with an indented
finger hold on each side, where you can conveniently grasp it to take the lid
off. Crafted from walnut, it has dowel
joint accents at each corner and a pleasant wax and lacquer finish. On the lid there are a few grooved lines
which complete the simple details. It’s
a handsome desk piece and appears right at home. Mostly the box remains ignored, biding its
time. Mostly. Once in a while, however, at the end of a
meeting, or an interview, someone will ask for my business card. And I will smile, nod and reach over to pass
them the box. Of course, the lid won’t
come off.

Open for Business by Peter Wiltshire

The “Open for Business” box was created by Peter Wiltshire,
a cinematographer who resides in Canada.
Usually busy directing the shots with his massive cameras and video
equipment, Peter occasionally turns his considerable talents to
woodworking. He has designed a number of
award winning and sought after puzzle boxes over the past few years, and the
Open for Business box is his most recent offering which he made for the
International Puzzle Party in 2015. He
created the box specifically to hold business cards and designed it to fool the
unsuspecting non-puzzler. This box also
has one of the better names out there, and who doesn’t like a clever name? There are only two moves required to access
the cards inside, but they are cleverly hidden and once discovered will bring a
smile to your face even if you are a seasoned puzzler.

Just open it for business (cards) ... simple, right?

The name and purpose of this puzzle box got the creative
cocktail wheels in my brain turning.
Wouldn’t it be fun, I thought, to have an “Open for Cocktail” which
needed to be “opened” to access it somehow, just like this box. It couldn’t just be a bottled cocktail, open
and pour - that would obviously be much too simple. The challenge reminded me of another cocktail
I once created, which changed from one thing to another over time – I called it
a “sequential discovery” cocktail which “solved itself”. That was the London Calling which celebrated
Brian Young’s IPP Grand Prize for the Big Ben puzzle in 2015. The drink transforms from a Gin and Tonic
into a Pimm’s Cup as the ice melts.
Working from that idea, I present the Open for Business cocktail. It starts out as the classic business
person’s drink – the dry martini. Inside
the glass resides a purist’s ratio of mostly gin to a hint of vermouth. Sitting prominently amidst this impeccable
potion is an impressive ice ball. Even
more impressive is the fact that this sphere is not solid, and holds another
cocktail inside. That’s right – a
combination of bourbon, lime, ginger beer and bitters are housed inside the
hollow ice. This is a mule variation (as
in Moscow mule) which uses bourbon rather than vodka. It’s often referred to as a Kentucky Mule or
a Beacon Mule. So now we have two
cocktails. But we should make it a true
“Businessman’s Special” (three drinks), right?
We’ll have to … drumroll please … Open for Business. Crack the ice ball and allow the drinks to
mingle and you will have another classic from the tiki canon, a cocktail
perfect for anyone unfortunate enough to be faced with this bothersome business
card box: the Suffering Bastard.

The Open for Business cocktail

The story behind the Suffering Bastard cocktail dates back
to World War II when in 1942 Allied and German forces were locked in the battle
of El Alamein to determine control of Egypt on the North African
continent. After the long and hard
fought defeat of Rommel’s forces by the British Army, Churchill declared the
battle to be the turning point in the war for the Allies. The height of elegance in the capital city of
Cairo was the Shepheard Hotel, where officers and the likes of Charles de
Gaulle, King Farouk and Churchill himself were known to gather at its Long
Bar. Head barman Joe Scialom invented a
strong drink which masked the low quality booze available with limes and ginger
beer and dubbed it the “Suffering Bastard” (the Allies were losing at the
time). It proved immensely popular, to
the point that Scialom once received a telegram from the front lines requesting
he deliver eight gallons to the soldiers right away. Rommel was quoted saying
he would be “drinking champagne in the master suite at Shepheard’s soon”. Perhaps he should have ordered the Suffering
Bastard instead.

A Dry Martini plus a Kentucky Mule makes you a Suffering Bastard!

So beware next time you request someone’s business card –
they just might present you with the Open for Business puzzle box. You can politely puzzle your way through it
while drinking these three cocktails at once – a martini as you get down to
business, a mule since the box stubbornly refuses to open, and as it takes you
longer and longer, and the ice in your glass melts, a suffering bastard. I hope I’m not the only one who thinks this
is hysterical. Cheers!

Time to get down to business!

Open for Business:

1 oz gin

¼ oz Cocchi Americano

1 oz bourbon

½ oz fresh lime juice

¼ oz demerara syrup

2 oz ginger beer

4-5 dashes Angostura bitters

Add the gin and vermouth to a glass. Combine the bourbon, lime, syrup, ginger beer
and bitters, and inject into a prepared hollow ice sphere. Carefully place the ice sphere into the glass
and plug the hole with a twist. Crack
the ice or allow to melt to complete the cocktail. Serve with the remaining ginger beer to be
added as desired. Take a bow.